Poetic Theater Productions Presents Love Redefined: RENEW

Poetic Theater Productions announces their tenth annual Love Redefined showcase, Love Redefined: RENEW to take place Wednesday, February 19th, 2020 at 8:00pm at Judson Memorial Church, presented with Judson Arts. Love Redefined is a celebration of radical love of self and others with a night of poetic, theatrical, and musical remixes, re-imaginings and riffs.

Previous Love Redefined showcases have asked writers to respond to classic love poems and quotes, encouraging a more radical and inclusive understanding of love. These new works, performed and presented in the annual showcase alongside the pieces that inspired them, have sought to honor the layered complexity of love; emphasized a more non-traditional, non-commercial, holistic view of what it means to love ourselves and others; and examined the various ways in which that manifests in our daily lives. Inspired by the works of writers and artists such as Sylvia Plath, Angela Davis, William Shakespeare, e.e. cummings, Rumi, Frida Khalo, and August Wilson, PTP artists have created over one hundred and twenty original pieces for Love Redefined over the past ten years, exploring topics of self love, community and chosen family, male vulnerability, sexual freedom, queerness, and more. This year, in Love Redefined: RENEW, Poetic Theater Productions' community of artists are drawing from these last ten years of response pieces as inspiration, continuing to redefine the conversation surrounding love, and setting the stage for the next ten years of poetic theater.

Love Redefined: Renew will feature re-presented pieces from 2010-2019 by Tanaya Winder, Keomi Tarver, Daniel Fritz Silber-Baker, Vanessa Rappa, Margaret McCarthy, Iris A. Law, Teniece Divya Johnson, Baba Israel, Joanna Hoffman, Craig muMs Grant, Safia Elhillo, Maurice Decaul, Everett Cox, and Mickey Bolmer, with response pieces written by Catherine Weingarten, Becca Travis, Drew Pham, Jenny Pacanowski, Jacqueline Jones LaMon, Mika Kauffman, Amir Hall, fajjr + ali, Lynaé DePriest AKA Thoughtress, Toni Ann DeNoble, Maya N. Carter, Nia Calloway, Toni Blackman, and Raquel Almazan. Love, Redefined: Renew includes projection design by Lisa Renkel and Brian Pacelli, and lighting design by Kryssy Wright. The showcase is curated by Ellen Mischinski, Jeremy Karafin, Dontonio Demarco and Maya N. Carter. Love Redefined will examine love as healing, community, joy, vulnerability, pleasure, and revolution.

Poetic Theater Productions' mission is to define the modern genre of "poetic theater" by connecting and fostering a community of artists who are passionately creating relevant and accessible work and reinvigorating a conscious theater of language. PTP offers resources and opportunities for poets, playwrights, and theater artists to create new work and see it through to production via educational workshops, developmental readings and performance. PTP seeks out and creates opportunities to connect with communities affected by the issues of topic within our productions through collaborative projects and exchanges of art and ideas. Poetictheater.com

Judson Arts Wednesdays is the completely free, completely uncensored creative arm of Judson Memorial Church, a sacred and profane place that has nurtured artists and their work for decades. Judson Memorial Church is one of the few early venues of the original off-off Broadway movement and was the home of the historic Judson Poets' Theater.